Bending Spoons has agreed to acquire workplace software company Airtable for $1.285 billion in cash, continuing the Italian technology group’s strategy of buying established digital businesses whose valuations have fallen significantly from previous highs.
The transaction represents Bending Spoons’ first major acquisition since its public-market debut and is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approval. Including Airtable’s net cash position, the deal implies an equity value of approximately $2.25 billion.
The price stands in sharp contrast to Airtable’s valuation during the technology investment boom. The company was valued at approximately $11 billion in 2021 after raising $735 million in a funding round, meaning the latest enterprise value is almost 90% below its former peak.
Airtable’s Valuation Falls From Its 2021 Peak
Founded in 2013, Airtable developed a cloud platform that combines features of spreadsheets, databases, and no-code application-building tools. Businesses use the service to organize information, manage projects, automate workflows, and create internal software without relying on traditional development teams.
The company raised more than $1.4 billion from investors as demand for cloud software and low-code platforms accelerated. By 2021, Airtable had become one of the most valuable private software companies in the United States.
However, valuations across the software-as-a-service industry declined sharply after interest rates increased and investors became more focused on profitability, cash flow, and sustainable growth. Airtable shares reportedly traded on secondary markets at a valuation of around $4 billion earlier in 2026 before the Bending Spoons agreement was announced.
Revenue Continues to Grow
Despite the steep valuation reset, Airtable remains a substantial software business.
Bending Spoons said Airtable’s annual recurring revenue reached approximately $480 million as of June 2026, representing annual growth of more than 20%. Airtable also says its platform is used by more than 500,000 organizations, including a large proportion of Fortune 100 companies.
More recently, the company has repositioned its platform around artificial intelligence. Airtable introduced AI tools capable of working with structured business data and completing multi-step workflows inside company databases.
Its newer agentic AI products are designed to help businesses coordinate specialized agents that can research information, update records, generate content, and automate operational tasks.
The strategy could provide Bending Spoons with an opportunity to combine Airtable’s existing customer base with its own technology, product development, and monetization infrastructure.
Bending Spoons Continues Its Acquisition Strategy
Bending Spoons has built its business by acquiring recognizable digital products and operating them for the long term rather than quickly reselling them. The company says its portfolio reaches more than one billion registered users and over 400 million monthly active users.
Its portfolio already includes brands such as Evernote, Vimeo, AOL, Komoot, Eventbrite, and WeTransfer. Many of these businesses were once prominent technology companies but later faced slower growth, intense competition, or declining valuations.
Bending Spoons typically seeks to improve profitability by restructuring operations, simplifying product portfolios, raising subscription prices, and applying shared technologies across its businesses.
That approach has also attracted criticism because several acquisitions have been followed by significant workforce reductions and major changes to product pricing or strategy.
A Sign of the SaaS Valuation Reset
The Airtable transaction illustrates how dramatically private software valuations have changed since 2021.
At its peak, Airtable’s valuation reflected expectations that low-code software would become one of the technology industry’s dominant growth markets. Five years later, the company is being acquired for a fraction of that value despite continuing to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in recurring revenue.
For Bending Spoons, the discount creates an opportunity to acquire a widely used enterprise platform with meaningful revenue and an established customer base. For Airtable’s later-stage investors, however, the transaction could result in substantial losses compared with the company’s previous financing valuation.
The acquisition is therefore both another major addition to Bending Spoons’ expanding portfolio and a symbol of the broader reset affecting software companies that raised capital at exceptionally high valuations during the pandemic-era technology boom.
